


Knight in Rusty Armor

by Syn (AShadowsKiss)



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gen, Ian Gallagher & Mandy Milkovich Friendship, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 12:32:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4391984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AShadowsKiss/pseuds/Syn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life just wasn't fair, was it? She tried and she tried yet everyone around her still got hurt, the people she loved still suffered. Her best friend, her Ian, and there was nothing she could do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knight in Rusty Armor

It just wasn't fair, was it? The way the world worked. The cards she'd been dealt in life. Even when she tried it seemed she mostly just failed. Whether it was with school, her personal life or helping people she cared about. Nothing she ever did seemed to be good enough and now, now she had even failed her best friend. Her knight in shining armor. Her Ian. 

She blamed Mickey for his down fall.

He knew she did.

Maybe that wasn't fair either, but life wasn't fair. She learned that the hard way. So she loved Ian just a little bit more than her brother. Would take a bullet for both of them but she'd push Ian out of the way first.   
Ian always came to mind whenever she thought of heroes. When she thought of someone who would use their love for her as a shield to keep her safe.   
Mickey was her protector. Always had been, always would be. He used his entire body as a shield but never claimed to love her. He'd beat up anyone for looking at her wrong but he wouldn't hold her hand. He'd destroy anyone who hurt her yet he wouldn't soothe her wounds. 

 

Mickey always made fun of her, for the colors in her hair and the clothes she wore and the music she listened to. He ridiculed her friends and laughed at the things she said.   
And he was the first one to get up when her father was in a mood. When her father started yelling and threatening and throwing things around Mickey was the first to get up, to stand up in front of him and push her behind him. To push her behind Iggy and Joey too, while he stood in the front and took the punishment for whatever slight her father had imagined this time. He started protecting her from their father when he was thirteen and she was twelve. 

 

Ian tried to kill himself on a perfectly bland Wednesday morning. There hadn't been anything special about that day, until that very moment at least. He lived, of course he lived. Mickey hadn't been able to stay away from him for more than five minutes in years. He'd learned somewhere what to do if Ian ever did something like that, and now he had. 

She went to visit him in the hospital. Where his skin was as pale as the sheets were white and the red of his hair was the only shock of color in the room, maybe even in the ward. She sat down in one of the squeaky plastic chairs standing beside his bed and played with his fingers for a while, staring at the thick bandages wrapped around his wrists and the remaining bloodstains under his fingernails. When she was finally able to look him in the face the corners of his mouth were pushed up into something resembling a smile but his eyes were dead.

When she returned home to her brother she found him sitting in the same spot she'd left him in hours ago, sitting on the couch surrounded by burned out cigarette butts and empty beer bottles.

She could barely look at him without feeling bile rising in the back of her throat and remembering Ians face as he'd looked at her in the hospital, a mix of relief and disappointment and she couldn't figure out what emotion was for what. Mickey ought to hurt the way she did so she spit the words out before she could swallow them back down; "it's your fault he's in there." 

She hadn't expected him to react, hadn't expected him to even hear her but he did. "I know," and it wasn't even a sigh. Like the words just escaped from him every time he exhaled. An endless loop of admissions of guilt for all the things he'd done her wrong. She looked at him then; his eyes were as dead as Ians had been.

And maybe life wasn't fair and maybe she'd love Ian always a little bit more than anyone else and maybe she blamed Mickey for the fact that her knight in shining armor broke but it broke her heart to see him like this more than Ian ever could.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a tumblr (synfulwondering) if you want to come say hii!


End file.
